Whilst the lull may be exaggerated by some, it is undeniable that the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) has been of varying quality as of late. Captain America: Brave New World will not be proving any of the doubters wrong but there is nuggets of quality scattered throughout this relatively messy film.

In this outing, we see Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie) fully take the reigns of the Captain America mantle. After a meeting with the newly elected president, Thaddeus ‘Thunderbolt’ Ross (Harrison Ford), goes awry, Cap must unravel a devious plot while Ross’ temper starts to bubble over.

Now the pitch of this film is frankly outlandish. It’s hard to fathom the idea of somebody walking into the board meeting and pitching what is essentially a The Incredible Hulk sequel that happens to feature Captain America. It really just makes Cap feel out of place in his own film and that doesn’t go away, no matter how well Mackie does. It doesn’t help that The Incredible Hulk is bottom of the barrel in the MCU hierarchy. The elements carried over from that film were not terrible but half-baked at best so it’s baffling as to why they were so adamant to go down this path. The Leader, as a villain, is rather unconvincing and the political thriller element he brings is bare bones generic and there is not enough thought put into it. It’s nowhere near the political thriller ideas that The Winter Soldier brings and it’s clearly trying its best to replicate that experience. It did get one element from The Winter Soldier right though and that was the tonal consistency. Often in these films, decent dialogue exchanges are ruined with a stupid joke. Granted, this film is not exactly littered with good dialogue, but it did this a lot less. A much welcome step down from the several times it is done in Thor: Love and Thunder, for example. 

Even with the dialogue being a bit off, I think the performances are still good. Harrison Ford can do know wrong and he was great with what he got served. Anthony Mackie doesn’t exactly ooze charisma all the time but was convicing as the lead man. The character work for these two central characters are worlds apart in quality though. Ford’s angry ascent building towards a final outburst was well handled and it almost makes you wish for a world where Red Hulk was not on the marketing at all and was just a well executed surprise. The arc ends flatly but it was largely an interesting element for the majority of the runtime. Sam Wilson, however, seems to be obsessed with repeating his ‘I don’t think I’m cut out to be Captain America’ mantra that has been seen before. There was literally a whole show trying to establish and finalise this arc and yet for some reason, it’s here again. That’s where this film’s laziness really shines. In a Captain America film, you must give Cap a reason to be in the film and develop him in a way that’s unique. Any hero could have taken his place and it could have been the same exact story. These identity crises, both in Sam’s character and Marvel’s growing creative bankruptcy, are the crux of the films problems.

Technically the film is all over the place but there are worse offenders in the MCU with its current CGI crisis. There are some moments where it can look a bit shoddy, the obsessive use of green screen being quite evident. Still, scenes like the final Red Hulk fight are wonderful to look at and are a lot of fun. The aerial battle is a particular standout for its inventive combat elements and the tension of the scene’s context making such a huge sprawling landscape feel quite suffocating. The be-all and end-all is that it’s fun and engaging to see superheroes do cool stuff every now and again. This film is no different.

When The Marvels came out there started to be a noticeable determination from the vocal minority for some of these films to be bad. There is a bandwagon people hop on with films like this, trying to hate it. Constructive and well detailed criticism is welcome but just calling a film ‘mid’ and calling it a day because somebody else said so is annoying and not fun to read. Funnily enough though, ‘mid’ is probably the perfect term for describing this film. It is certainly not terrible and it has some merits here and there but it’s certainly not going to live long in the memory for fans that watch it.